How to improve the Pairwise

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

Which is exactly why I proposed lowering the QWB to the top 10 teams, because there really is a lot of parity below the top few teams.

Just an FYI, that would not have change the order of teams at all this year...same top 14 same order...15 through 24 would shuffle but the top 14 is unchanged. (assuming the award for beating #11 through #20 would get shifted to #1 through #20...so beating #10 would be worth 0.0025 for a neutral site, etc).

[UML Puck Hawk]

Which is exactly why I proposed lowering the QWB to the top 10 teams, because there really is a lot of parity below the top few teams.

Then move back to an 8 or 12 team field if you think there's an arbitrary cut line. Then again the past few years the last team in has won, so maybe there's more parity than you think

[manurespreader]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

I feel your pain, Shirtless, but my take on it (as a professional statistician when I'm not watching hockey) is that there is no possible system which can reliably separate the 14th best team from the 15th best team in a league where there is only a modest amount of mixing between conferences. I have no problem living with the notion that there are probably six teams in any given year that any system would accept, another 4 or 5 that any half-decent system accepts, and that the rest of the spots (after AQ) are always going to be methodology-dependent in a way that will be fairly arbitrary. .

Which is exactly why I proposed lowering the QWB to the top 10 teams, because there really is a lot of parity below the top few teams.

[Patman]

Which notion? To me trying to measure current performance is saying that you're in the "more likely to win the tournament" camp. I don't worry about current performance because I'm in the "reward for a full season's work" camp, so the notion of "current performance" is irrelevant.

Says you.

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And generally, I agree, but it's an argument one can make and one may make

[tape]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

Ideally an 8 team conference with 28 conference games works best. That gives 6 OOC that you can min/max out costs/revenues while giving a shot to your RPI and PWR.

IMO that's way too many conference games. Until Notre Dame joined, Hockey East used to play 27 conference games. Now they play 22 conference games which leaves 12 non-conf games, which I'm really liking. It's more fun to see a greater variety of teams come to town, and it creates better data for the Pairwise.

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

How many NC games involving other conference reps for each of Cornell, MTU and Min would it take to get them? Any guesses on how wild the swings that EoDS is talking about?

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

Great idea! Think people will fill the barn to watch Clarkson - Bemidji?

Ideally an 8 team conference with 28 conference games works best. That gives 6 OOC that you can min/max out costs/revenues while giving a shot to your RPI and PWR.

You really think attendance in Bemidji would be much different for LSSU or Clarkson? I don't.

8 teams playing a 28 game schedule with 6 OOC isn't ideal but it probably would be better to some extent because at least within conference everything would be balanced. I would think ideally, conferences would be capped at 24 conference games, but until the big boys are limited in their ability to force home games, that isn't a good solution to help keep games in small school venues. The reason the WCHA has 28 conference games isn't because LSSU outdraws Clarkson...its because it guarantees every team at least 14 home games...

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

Anything done must be able to be done by a fastidious layperson. As awful as things are, the RPI can be computed in a long afternoon with a simple calculator.

I completely disagree with this...took me 2 weeks of my free time with help from Jim Dahl to get through all the ins and outs of QWB, weighting games, etc. This is far from something a layperson can understand and compute with a long afternoon and a calculator. If it was simply the old RPI without weights, maybe. I think we're already past that point and to choose to not change a system simply because it's too complex is silly. A layperson can understand a system without being able to figure out the values themselves in an afternoon.

I feel your pain, Shirtless, but my take on it (as a professional statistician when I'm not watching hockey) is that there is no possible system which can reliably separate the 14th best team from the 15th best team in a league where there is only a modest amount of mixing between conferences. I have no problem living with the notion that there are probably six teams in any given year that any system would accept, another 4 or 5 that any half-decent system accepts, and that the rest of the spots (after AQ) are always going to be methodology-dependent in a way that will be fairly arbitrary. I think it's fairly easy to look at the just misses (MTU, Cornell and Minnesota) and make cases for them getting in (well, not Cornell... I hate them) but you have to ask who are you going to throw out? If MTU is in, Duluth is out. I think it's difficult to come up with objective criteria where that becomes a no-brainer.

When Yale was the last team in 2013, I figured out that there was a game played between Western Michigan and St. Lawrence before Yale's season even started in which an OT goal by St. Lawrence knocked WMU out of a tournament that Yale won. http://board.uscho.com/showthread.ph...=1#post5686238 Once you get down bast the top 5 or 6 (and even within that group amongst each other) it's all pretty arbitrary. i don't think of the Pairwise as the definitive way to pick the best 16-x teams so much as an objective and not completely stupid way to do it. So that's a long roundabout way of agreeing with Patman. To make it better, you'd better have some pretty solid and irrefutable ideas about what better means in evaluating teams that clearly aren't the best, but still have a shot to win a one-and-done four round tournament.

I agree with you that it is difficult to find any system that is flawless in determining the top 10 non-AQ teams, especially in the case of college hockey when so few of the games intermingle between east and west. The biggest issue is the lack of that overlap and the ability to properly compare MTU to Cornell as an example. Under the current System Cornell wins on RPI but loses CoOp, but the only CoOp was Yale...so that is no way to flip a comparison...

I really try hard here to get the point across that this isn't specifically about MTU. I can tell that most are not believing me...

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

Great idea! Think people will fill the barn to watch Clarkson - Bemidji?

Ideally an 8 team conference with 28 conference games works best. That gives 6 OOC that you can min/max out costs/revenues while giving a shot to your RPI and PWR.

It does produce wild(er) swings in RPI and PWR when you have a more limited sample size for OOC games, though. Really makes those wins a lot more valuable.

[joecct]

get conferences to reduce number of conference games to have more interconference matchups to allow for better cross conference data...

Great idea! Think people will fill the barn to watch Clarkson - Bemidji?

Ideally an 8 team conference with 28 conference games works best. That gives 6 OOC that you can min/max out costs/revenues while giving a shot to your RPI and PWR.

[goblue78]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

I feel your pain, Shirtless, but my take on it (as a professional statistician when I'm not watching hockey) is that there is no possible system which can reliably separate the 14th best team from the 15th best team in a league where there is only a modest amount of mixing between conferences. I have no problem living with the notion that there are probably six teams in any given year that any system would accept, another 4 or 5 that any half-decent system accepts, and that the rest of the spots (after AQ) are always going to be methodology-dependent in a way that will be fairly arbitrary. I think it's fairly easy to look at the just misses (MTU, Cornell and Minnesota) and make cases for them getting in (well, not Cornell... I hate them) but you have to ask who are you going to throw out? If MTU is in, Duluth is out. I think it's difficult to come up with objective criteria where that becomes a no-brainer.

When Yale was the last team in 2013, I figured out that there was a game played between Western Michigan and St. Lawrence before Yale's season even started in which an OT goal by St. Lawrence knocked WMU out of a tournament that Yale won. http://board.uscho.com/showthread.ph...=1#post5686238 Once you get down bast the top 5 or 6 (and even within that group amongst each other) it's all pretty arbitrary. i don't think of the Pairwise as the definitive way to pick the best 16-x teams so much as an objective and not completely stupid way to do it. So that's a long roundabout way of agreeing with Patman. To make it better, you'd better have some pretty solid and irrefutable ideas about what better means in evaluating teams that clearly aren't the best, but still have a shot to win a one-and-done four round tournament.

[CLS]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

The main reason they got rid of it was the over emphasis on conference play. That was when non-conf games were scarce especially amongst the western schools. Though the notion is sound... How do you measure current performance?

Which notion? To me trying to measure current performance is saying that you're in the "more likely to win the tournament" camp. I don't worry about current performance because I'm in the "reward for a full season's work" camp, so the notion of "current performance" is irrelevant.

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

I am not saying RPI is perfect. When I evaluate a team, I like to look at good wins and bad losses. To me, Tech doesn't really have any good wins. It is kinda tough to when you have 28 of 34 games where you aren't playing good teams. Even if we switched it to KRACH, Tech is only 17th, Mankato 23rd, BGSU 26th.

Once again, I'm not trying to make this about MTU...but if you must go there...lets look at something. Wiscconsin, Army, Colgate, Western Michigan, Connecticut and LSSU finished 40-44 in the final PWR...if I add one game to the season for MTU against each of those 6 teams and run the pwr predictor, MTU gets the biggest bump from beating WMU (0.0028) and the smallest against Connecticut (0.0018). If those teams are all very similar according final RPI, should beating them result in that much variation which compounds throughout a season? A win over WMU is worth at least 0.0006 more than anyone else in that range with everyone being between 0.0018 and 0.0022.

[Patman]

Excellent point and to me it emphasizes two different theories as to who should get the higher seed. Emphasizing the last n games to me is saying that the higher seed should go to the team more likely to win the tournament. Emphasizing every game equally is saying that the higher seed should be a reward for an entire season's work.

The main reason they got rid of it was the over emphasis on conference play. That was when non-conf games were scarce especially amongst the western schools. Though the notion is sound... How do you measure current performance?

[CLS]

Re: How to improve the Pairwise

I remember. The old "record in the last 16 games" factor used by the selection committee gave them a lot of flexibility.

I'm not a huge fan of this, even though I'm sure my team may have benefited from it a time or two.

Because most teams play primarily conference foes in the second half[i of the season, it's not a great "comparison" between teams, except of course teams from the same conference.

It also can paint a misleading picture. Say you have a pretty good team, with strong first half record, but then suffers some injuries. Maybe those players don't get back until about 4 games left in the regular season, at which point the team seems to have righted the ship and returned to form.

Excellent point and to me it emphasizes two different theories as to who should get the higher seed. Emphasizing the last n games to me is saying that the higher seed should go to the team more likely to win the tournament. Emphasizing every game equally is saying that the higher seed should be a reward for an entire season's work.